which told them that business would detain him in that city
for nearly a fortnight longer. "When I do return," ended the note, "I
will fetch an old friend to see Kate."

"Who can it be?" wondered Kate. "There is no old friend of mine that I
am aware of in Montreal. Papa likes to be mysterious."

"Yes," said Rose; "I should think so, when we have a mystery in the very
house."

"What mystery?"

"Mr. Richards, of course. He's a mystery worse than anything in the
'Mysteries of Udolpho.' Why can nobody get to see him but that
soft-stepping, oily-tongued little weasel, Ogden?"

Kate looked at the pretty sister she loved so well, with the coldest
glances she had ever given her.

"Mr. Richards is an invalid; he is unable to see any one, or quit his
room. What mystery is there in that?"

"There's a mystery somewhere," said Rose, sagaciously. "Who is Mr.
Richards?"

"A friend of papa's--and poor. Don't ask so many questions, Rose. I have
nothing more to say on the subject."

"Then I must find out for myself--that is all," thought Rose; "and I
will, too, before long, in spite of half a dozen Ogdens."

Rose tried with a zeal and perseverance worthy a better cause, and most
signally failed. Mr. Richards was invisible. His meals went up daily.
Ogden and Kate visited him daily, but the baize door was always locked,
and Ogden and Kate, on the subject, were dumb. Kate visited the invalid
at all hours, by night and by day. Ogden rarely left him except when
Miss Danton was there, and then he took a little airing in the garden.
Rose's room was near the corridor leading to the green baize room; and
often awaking "in the dead waste and middle of the night," she would
steal to that mysterious room to listen. But nothing was ever to be
heard, nothing ever to be seen--the mystery was fathomless. She would
wander outside at all hours, under Mr. Richards' window; and looking up,
wonder how he endured his prison, or what he could possibly be about--if
those dark curtains were never raised and he never looked at the outer
world. Once or twice a face had appeared, but it was always the keen,
thin face of Mr. Ogden; and Rose's curiosity, growing by what it fed on,
began to get insupportable.

"What can it mean, Grace?" she would say to the housekeeper, to whom she
had a fashion, despite no end of snubbing, of confiding her secret
troubles. "There's something wrong; where there's secrecy, there's
guilt--I've always heard that."

"Don'